Complaints are made of this interference by Federal authority;
but if said amendment and act do not provide for such interference under
the circumstances as above stated, then they are without meaning, force,
or effect, and the whole scheme of colored enfranchisement is worse than
mockery and little better than a crime. Possibly Congress may find it
due to truth and justice to ascertain, by means of a committee, whether
the alleged wrongs to colored citizens for political purposes are real
or the reports thereof were manufactured for the occasion.
The whole number of troops in the States of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia,
Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas,
Mississippi, Maryland, and Virginia at the time of the election was
4,082. This embraces the garrisons of all the forts from the Delaware
to the Gulf of Mexico.
Another trouble has arisen in Arkansas. Article 13 of the constitution
of that State (which was adopted in 1868, and upon the approval of
which by Congress the State was restored to representation as one of
the States of the Union) provides in effect that before any amendments
proposed to this constitution shall become a part thereof they shall be
passed by two successive assemblies and then submitted to and ratified
by a majority of the electors of the State voting thereon.
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